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How has the geography of the West shaped who we are?

by Christian Lo

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The Economy that Shapes the Geography of the West
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How has the West’s geography shaped who we are today?
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By: Christian Lo
For our project, we had a driving question that we were trying to answer. It was:
How has the geography of the West shaped who we are?
In the later pages, you will see how answer the question. To define what geography is, we turned it into 5 different parts. I made a page to explain what it means:
The 5 themes can be split into different parts, regions, location, human environment interaction, place and movement.

I will be breaking down each theme into different subcategories. I will also show why and what type of subcategory the photo I took shows.
Regions can be split into different parts: formal, vernacular and functional.

Formal regions are defined borders that are in maps (example: Vancouver).

Vernacular regions are places that have similar characteristics (example: Chinatown).

Functional regions are locations that all serve under one specific thing (example: IKEA).

The region type in the photo I took was formal. I had just entered the formal region of Calgary.
Locations can be split into 2 different parts: exact and relative.

Exact locations is an exact address (example: 1204 Caledonia Ave, North Vancouver).

Relative locations is used when you don’t know your exact location (example: in Deep cove).

Human environment interaction can be split into different parts: adapt, modify and depend.

We adapt to unprecedented things (floods destroying buildings, we will make our buildings stronger).

We modified the terrain to build and mine (example: Frank slide, they had a coal mine).

We also depend on things (example: Alberta depend on the natural resources because they need oil).

My photo showed how we modified the landscape, we built buildings and roads.
Place can be split into 2 different parts: physical and cultural.

Physical places mean the surrounding landscapes (example: trees, mountains).

Cultural places are locations that has a cultural background (example: Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump).

Movement can be split into different parts: people, products and ideas.

The movement of people is the transportation of humans around (example: cars, planes).

The movement of products is the transportation of products (example: trains, boats).

The movement of idea means that an idea from one place has been moved to another (example: Buddhism travelling down the Silk Road to China).

The way my photo shows movement is products, in the photo you can see a train transporting different types of cargo along the CPR.
After creating the comic, we went on a field study to gather evidence to how the geography of the West has shaped us. As a keystone, I had to take photos at different landmarks that shows the 5 themes of themes of geography and answers the driving question. I have also linked all my answers through an economical lens.

Answer to the driving question: How has the geography of the West shaped us?

I think that a thriving economy was what shaped us to who we are today. I had linked all my answers through an economic lens to show how it did We created a diverse economy using our natural resources in our land. By shaping the landscape for money, it shaped us.